HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

The Average Man wishes you and your family a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

IN MEMORIAM

Saturday will be the one year anniversary of the day we lost our dog, Spooky (a.k.a. Puppy) to cancer. I don't know whether or not heaven exists, but if it does, I've always pictured the conversation between God and Puppy going something like this ...

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

GOD is dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes. He -- or She -- is putting away groceries, washing dishes, and performing miscellaneous kitchen-type tasks. PUPPY is watching intently.

PUPPY: Where am I?
GOD: You are in heaven.

PUPPY: Why am I here?
GOD: You died.

PUPPY: I was sick.
GOD: You were very sick.

PUPPY: Will I go back?
GOD: No, I'm sorry.

PUPPY: What will I do?
GOD: You will stay here with me, and I will take care of you.

PUPPY: What about my people?
GOD: They will think about you always.

PUPPY: I will miss them.
GOD: They will miss you ... more than you know.

PUPPY: They loved me.
GOD: Very much.

PUPPY: Will you run with me?
GOD: Every day.

PUPPY: Will I get Greenies?
GOD: As many as you want.

PUPPY: Okay, I guess I'll stay then.
GOD: (smiling) I'm glad.

We miss you, buddy.

NO END IN SIGHT ... IS RIGHT

Last week, I finally got a chance to see the documentary No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent Into Chaos. For those of you who may not know, this is generally considered the best documentary on the subject of the Iraq War as it focuses purely on the policy decisions surrounding the topic and pretty much has no political agenda. In fact, it is my understanding that Charles Ferguson -- the writer, director, and producer of the film -- even supported our initial invasion.

I consider myself fairly informed on such matters, so I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the film. And for the first 10 minutes or so, that was kind of the case (PBS's The Dark Side covered much of the same ground). As the movie went forward, however, I found it to be entirely fresh. And its approach was 180 degrees from many docs in the same realm.

You see, most of what we read appropriately looks at the bad players (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, etc.), but this one actually focuses more on the good-hearted people who tried their darnedest to push aside all the political noise and make Iraq work despite the impossible odds. And it was truly heart wrenching to hear stories about how the amazingly incompetent Bush administration blocked them at every turn. I dare you, for example, to watch it and not have some respect for Jay Garner.

For what it's worth, I think conservatives should really watch this thing. Because unlike say ... a Michael Moore film ... if you thought invading Iraq was the right thing to do, you can see who screwed up your world view (and how) without feeling a sense of bias.

Anyway, I don't want to ruin the experience for anyone, so I'm not going to go into the details of the film. But I will just say that L. Paul Bremer might be the most horrible person in the universe.

BEST LAID INDUSTRY-LED PLANS

So, I was performing my daily scan of The New York Times last Thursday and came across the interesting headline In Mortgage Plan, Lenders Set Terms. Here's how it starts ...

At least one thing is clear about President Bush’s plan to help people trapped by the mortgage meltdown: it is an industry-led plan, not a government bailout ... Although Mr. Bush unveiled the plan at the White House on Thursday, its terms were set by the mortgage industry and Wall Street firms. The effort is voluntary and it leaves plenty of wiggle room for lenders. Moreover, it would affect only a small number of subprime borrowers.

It's amazing to me how a couple of sentences can so clearly define the problem with an entire [Bush] administration. How doth it define it? Let me count the ways:

1) "it is an industry-led plan" - Like all of Bush's roads to hell, it is paved with industry intentions. Anyone remember Cheney's super-duper-secret energy task force? Or how about the recent prescription drug plan? The problem, of course, with the industry making the plan is that the plan will only help the industry. This may reek of common sense; yet it is the normal way of doing business for these people. Can't wait to see what the oil industry comes up with to solve our global warming crisis.

2) "not a government bailout" - As I mentioned in a previous column, it's funny how Bush won't bailout suffering people, but he's more than happy to jump in and bailout corporations. The term government bailout is too close to the word welfare in their eyes, so we have to make sure and emphasize that it is surely not that. We are happy to give billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to companies like Blackwater, Halliburton, and Titan. But god forbid we throw a couple bucks to some poor sap who was duped into a crappy loan and will soon lose his home.

3) "The effort is voluntary" - Bush just loves to make all his mandates voluntary. You own a huge power plant that spews tons of CO2 and mercury into the air every year? Well, you better clean it up, buddy! Of course, it's voluntary, so if you don't feel like it, that's just fine. Give me a break.

4) "it would affect only a small number of subprime borrowers" - What, my industry-led, voluntary, non-government bailout program won't really help anyone? Shocker!

All I can say is that this is the government you get when it is led by a man who bases his programs on faith, gut instinct, cronyism, and political ideology ... instead of what works.

THE AVERAGE MAN VS. COX CABLE

For the last two decades, I've been at war with Cox Cable. It doesn't matter that this battle is mostly in my head and that Cox -- not surprisingly -- doesn't know we're fighting it. My frustration is still quite real, though, and I'm fed up. To give you an idea from where my anger arises, I need to take you back ...

My first exposure to this company's sleazy tactics came in the late eighties when I rented my first apartment in Isla Vista. Being relatively new to the whole living on my own thing, I did as you might expect and enabled all the appropriate utilities: gas, electricity, telephone, etc. A quick phone call to all these places, and my new pad started jumping to life. For me, though, no existence is quite whole without television, so Cox was high on my to-do list. "Okay," they said, "we'll send someone out." What? Can't you just flip it on? I mean, I already connected the cable from the wall to the TV. "Are you crazy," they implied, "we're not magicians." So, I paid $40 for some dude to (I'm not kidding) clip the ends off of all the cables and attach new ones. "You gonna have more than one TV," he asks? Um, yes (I should have lied). He then proceeds to take the already existing splitter out of the wall and attaches a cable for my second set. "We'll have to charge you for that." After he's done performing all of those useless tasks, he of course, calls headquarters to have them flip it on.

The second story I would like to tell you actually happened to a friend of mine in Las Vegas ... A few months ago, he decides to upgrade his whole entertainment system to the newest, fancy schmancy HD everything. So, the cable guy (also Cox) comes out to his home and sets the whole thing up. After the work is done, my friend looks at the bill and notices that he has been charged a cable box setup fee, a DVR setup fee, and an HD setup fee. You might see where I'm going with this ... THEY ARE ALL THE SAME DEVICE! You plug the cable into the box and then plug the box into the television. Voila! Geez, I'm surprised they didn't charge a setup fee for each channel.

I could go on and on, but the point is that the cable companies are out of control. And I'm certainly not the only person who thinks this. If you've been paying attention, the (very pro-business) F.C.C. of all things has been trying to reign them in. You see, there was this little agreement made many moons ago that once the cable companies reached 70% of US homes, the F.C.C. could start regulating them. Turns out that they've recently hit that magic number, but the cable companies hired their lobbying dogs, did some of that fuzzy math, and got a group of Republicans to kill the thing.

So, what does this mean for you and me? Firstly, Cox can continue to raise my rates at a much quicker pace than inflation without giving me any additional services (exactly as they've been doing over the last twenty years). I currently pay $110 a month for cable with no HD, no Internets access, and no phone. Sound fair to you? Secondly, they will not be forced to go where the world is going and look at "a la carte" services so that I can pick and choose the stations I want. Thirdly, they can continue to create these strange "tier" packages to maximize their profits at the expense of the consumer. Cox, for example, charges me $10 a month for HBO and justifies it by forcing me to receive 10 HBO channels. Never mind that I may have no desire to see Rock IV eight times in one month (seven maybe). There's a word for this type of behavior ... MONOPOLY.

I'd like to leave you with this somewhat humorous story from Studio Briefing:

Religious broadcasters have renewed their opposition to efforts by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to require cable TV providers to offer programming on an "a la carte" basis. In a statement, the Faith and Family Broadcasting Coalition (FFBC), which lobbies on behalf of religious broadcasters, praised commission members who balked at efforts by Martin to strengthen the ability of the FCC to regulate cable TV under a controversial rule that would kick in when cable TV is available to 70 percent of U.S. households and when 70 percent of those households have subscribed to cable systems. Martin's changes, the FFBC said, "would have had a devastating effect on religious broadcasters." It quoted Colby May, director of the American Center for Law and Justice's Washington office as saying, "A per-channel charge would dramatically limit, if not kill, the availability of religious-based programming on cable."

Is it just me, or is their argument that "a la carte" programming is bad because -- if someone were forced to pay for religious-based programming -- they wouldn't?